A Dear Colleague letter has just been advertised: http://www.nsf.gov/geo/sees/
NSF established the Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) investment area in FY 2010 in order to address challenges in climate and energy research and education using a systems-based approach to understanding, predicting, and reacting to change in the linked natural, social, and built environment. Initial efforts were focused on coordination of a suite of research and education programs at the intersection of climate and environment, including specific attention to incorporating human dimensions. SEES is expected to be a 5-year effort, extending through FY15. Continuing efforts will focus on supporting research that facilitates global community sustainability, specifically through building connections between current projects, creating new nodes of activity, and developing personnel needed to solve sustainability issues. Future efforts will be expanded to include sustainable energy research in science and engineering, and its socioeconomic and environmental implications. The SEES Portfolio will support research and education projects that span all eleven NSF Directorates and Offices, including: * research at the energy-environment-society nexus * novel energy production, harvesting, storage, transmission, and distribution technologies, and their intelligent control that minimizes environmental impact and corresponding adoption, socioeconomic, and policy issues * innovative computational science and engineering methods and systems for monitoring, understanding and optimizing life-cycle energy costs and carbon footprints of natural, social and built systems (including IT systems themselves) * data analysis, modeling, simulation, visualization, and intelligent decision-making facilitated by advanced computation to understand impacts of climate change and to analyze mitigation strategies * study of societal factors such as vulnerability and resilience, and sensitivity to regional change * short and long term research enabled by a new generation of experimental and observational networks * support for interdisciplinary education/learning science research, development, and professional capacity-building related to sustainability science and engineering * creation of research and education partnerships around forefront developments in sustainability science and engineering, both nationally and internationally * development of the workforce required to understand the complexities of environmental, energy, and societal sustainability * engaging the public to understand issues in sustainability and energy * development of the cyberinfrastructure and research instrumentation needed to enable sustainability science and engineering * support of the physical, cyber, and human infrastructure necessary to achieve SEES goals David W. Inouye Program Director Population and Community Ecology Cluster Division of Environmental Biology National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Blvd, Suite 635 Arlington, VA 22230 Phone: 703.292.8570 Fax: 703.292.9064 E-mail: [email protected]
